Hello.
Welcome to my branding course.

What is it exactly, and who is it for?
There are not easy answers, as there are no standards for how to see and do it.

Just about anyone in the business world is into Branding: business executives, management / strategy / marketing consultants, advertising and PR professionals, professors, and all types of designers – talking about purpose and value, differentiation vs distinctiveness, segmentation, positioning, naming, design, digital, activation, engagement, and as of late about ‘brand marketing’.

And the vast majority of the conversations are about business, marketing, and design philosophies for business success – where ‘branding’ is a critically important vector. It all adds up to a deafening amount of great content as to what Brand does, allows, engenders, causes, and enables – and how to exploit, market, sell, and measure it.

And you know what’s also deafening?
The silence about how to actually craft one.

Watch a detailed
30-minute overview –

with especially valuable content between 18:45 and 24:32

Ten sessions to strengthen, refine, and optimize your approach to crafting the Brand Fundamentals.

Then use it in a way that can flex and adjust to how you see and deploy Brand, to how you work, and to your clients’ type and discrete challenges.

context, historical to current
who does Branding today
definitions and functions
Corporate vs Product Branding
strategy to market: a path
briefly, the value of Brand

What you’ll get
An examination of Brand and Branding, as the context for the course and to provide a way to talk effectively to clients about the subject matters and their inter-relevance.

what it should, can, or must be
the parts, and Purpose
investigations & assessment
define what Brand needs to do
Action Plan, timing, budgets
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
Clarity on what must be known in order to create all the Brand Fundamentals, and on the nature and function of the Action Plan as the root for all brand development work.

Purpose (vs Brand)
path, models, componentry
Brand Platform examples
creating a Brand Promise
Promises and Taglines
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
Actionable clarity on the nature, role, and creation process of a Brand’s core and how it informs all other brand components and then everything that Brand will be and do in the world.

role, function, governing views
vs Portfolio Management
not just Branded House vs ...
Tiers, Process, Decision Trees
examples and case histories
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
In-depth understanding of the indispensability of it toward making Brand real in the marketplace, and of the completely bespoke nature of each and every client solution.

the Brand Platform as root
three-part translation
the Briefs
working with clients’ teams
implementation planning
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
A clear framing on how the tenets of Brand become real in the marketplace via the three aspects that create a market perception, and how to accurately doing so.

Brand and Culture
Corporate vs Brand Culture
Brand Values
work process, and adoption
case histories
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
An actionable appreciation of the relationship between employee culture and Brand, and of planning a sequential path from current state to alignment to adoption.

structure and approach
corporate vs business units
internal & external partners
case histories & examples
testing and deployment
how can AI help?

What you’ll get
A clear relationship between Brand and its messages, and how to deploy a delivery plan that optimizes the clients’ internal resources and external communications partners.

process, sequence, time, fees
the Creative Brief
an examination of the parts
the Theme
refresh, evolve, create
how can AI help?

what you’ll get
A practical understanding of Design in Corporate Identity, its scope and depth, and to plan and create it based on Brand and type of client as well as timing and budgets.

what is Brand Governance
the parts
governing bodies
Brand Ambassadors
corporate examples
how can AI help?

what you’ll get
A pragmatic and efficient approach to command & control the Brand’s tenets and all of its expressions: it’s not the created Brand that counts - it’s the implemented Brand.

governing perspectives
pitches and presentations
proposals and related process
responding to RFPs
examples
how can AI help?

what you’ll get
Nothing matters if you don’t win the work. But competence alone often is not enough, and there’s only one way that a practitioner can do ‘sales’: stop selling, and start helping.

Who the course is for.

Individuals

You do Brand-related work – as an independent, a freelancer, or a staff member in an agency or a corporate department.

The Course can help you just be better at it, more rounded, and more experienced by virtue of my case histories.

elevate your work,
which augments your value,
which expands your career

Agencies

Whether in you are in a design or a web firm, an advertising or PR agency, or a comms or digital consultancy, the context for and behind every project you do for a client is their Brand.

But Corporate Branding may not be your main purview, and you may be hesitant in adding it to the work you do.

make your work more meaningful, which makes it more valuable, which strengthens outreach and sales

Corporate Departments

You are in Marketing or Communications, and understand Brand – from an user’s standpoint, not a developer’s. The Course …

helps you better direct / manage the developers (internal on staff or external agencies), and how you deploy all-things Brand;
via its articulations (custom, workshops, sprints, call support), can let you solve challenges you have or planning to address; and
makes your department conversant on Brand’s building blocks

in a quick and cost-effective way,

use and manage Brand better
get real solutions to real challenges

Educational

As Branding and Brands are everywhere, and because the Course is professional-grade about the Brand Fundamentals:

it fits communications-related institutions; and
it can be offered as a subset of or aligned with a business-oriented Brand Management course.

And maybe it will activate student interest in pursuing a career in the Branding industry.

Brand is the backdrop for all organizations, and is related to varied competencies.

How the Course Works

Format
The Course is composed of ten sessions, each composed of six topics – sequential, integrated, and building on one another. Q. Malandrino narrates and explains the sessions in video recordings with the help of case histories, examples, and exhibits.

You can access the Course in one of three ways:

Receive all Sessions at once; then, at any point thereafter you can then have a personal email exchange and/or a phone session with Q. Malandrino.
Receive one Session a week, every Friday morning for ten weeks;
- the start of the ten weeks occurs five times a year: the next start is October 10 2025;
- each session is posted on a sharesite every Friday, and can be accessed via a password;
- you can email questions and comments by the following Wednesday at 10am EST; this will help us collate similar topics and allow us to email-answer in a consolidated and targeted manner by the next day, Thursday by 5pm; and
- there will be three Zoom videocalls as Q&As: between the 4th and 5th Sessions , between the 7th and 8th, and the week after the 10th.
Bespoke: these learnings can be customized to your needs, and can take place virtually or in-person:
- individual
- for groups
- workshops
- 9-day sprints
- regular Consulting

Also,
as we are committed to serve you professional interest and to continually address your comments and suggestions:

Exercises: as practical applicability is front and center in the Course’s governing perspective, ‘exercises’ will be given after each session. We will score each exercise directly with you on a scale of 1 to 5 and provide feedback and suggestions.
- While we hope you’ll complete them, they are not a requirement for accessing the Session that follows. Exercises can be given for Session 3, 4, and 6, to let you practice what we've covered in those Sessions. More specifically:
- the exercise for Session 3 Brand Positioning will involve creating a full Brand Platform for a sample company (you will choose the industry space);
- the exercise for Session 4 Brand Architecture will involve a review of two different architecture models we will provide; and
- the exercise for Session 6 Brand Culture will involve creating both an Employee and an Employer Brand for a well-known company we will provide.
Evaluations: together with each weekly Session, you will receive an Evaluation form, and we kindly ask you to complete it prior to receiving the following Session.

Certification
A Continuing Professional Development Certification is pending — and CPD hours will be available. www.cpduk.co.uk